John Lapinski (November 26 1967) is the Robert A. Fox Professor of Political Science, Faculty Director of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program and the Director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORES) at University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as the Faculty Director for the Executive Masters of Public Administration program within the Fels Institute of Government.
Lapinski also serves as the Director of the Elections Unit at NBC News [1]
Lapinski taught at Yale University from 1999 to 2006.[2] In the 1999–2000 academic year, he joined the university as Lecture Convertible in the department of Political Science. In 2000, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Political Science. That year he also received a Joint Appointment to the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and was named a Resident Fellow to the institution, as well as Resident Fellow for the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He remained in these positions until he left the university in 2006. Lapinski was named Associate Professor (untenured) at Yale University in the spring of 2006. Additionally, he was named Resident Fellow of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City from 2004 to 2005.[3]
He was most recently (2018) named Co-Faculty Director of the Fox Leadership Program and was awarded an endowed professorship – the Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor of Political Science. Of that appointment, John DiIulio, the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society and current director of the Fox Leadership Program, noted: “John Lapinski has brilliantly mentored numerous Fox-supported undergraduate fellows while helping greatly to expand fellowships from 50 in 2012 to more than 150 in each of the last two years. His exciting vision for both PORES and Fox is all about equipping and empowering students and recent alumni for 21st century leadership challenges.”[4]
Lapinski became faculty Director of the Fox Leadership Program on July 1, 2018. He also has served as Faculty Director for the Program on Opinion Research and Elections Studies since 2013 and is Annenberg Public Policy Fellow and Co-Faculty Director, Fels MPA Program.[5]
Lapinski's primary area of research is concerned with understanding national elections as well as lawmaking in Congress through empirical analysis.[6]
Lapinksi joined NBC News as an election analyst in 2000 and was named senior election analyst four years later.[7] In 2013, Lapinski was named director of elections at NBC News, replacing Sheldon Gawiser.[5] In 2015, the election team's decision desk group was given its first permanent space at 30 Rockefeller, replacing the News Sales Archives that had occupied the space previously.[8]
He is the author of The Substance of Representation (Princeton University Press, 2013) and co-author (with David A. Bateman and Ira Katznelson) of Southern Nation (Princeton University Press, 2018).